The suddenly explosive Canadiens

Travis Moen, of all people, opened the scoring – his first in 51 games.

That set the stage for David Desharnais's first in 26 – a controversial goal that video review showed coming off DD's high stick. And then, on a power-play, Daniel Brière's third in five games made it 3-0.

Romp, right?

Wrong. With half a minute left in the period, Alex Ovechkin's 19th, from a bad angle through Peter Budaj's legs, reduced the lead to two.

Shots were 13-13.

P.K. Subban fought Troy Brouwer, who had taken a cheap shot at Andrei Markov.

Difficult weekend begins

Your Montreal Canadiens play a back-to-back set against two teams that are ahead of them in the Eastern Conference standings.

First up are the Washington Capitals, who are coming off an embarrassing 4-0 home-ice loss to Pittsburgh in which Marc-André Fleury made a mere 18 saves.

The Penguins play the Islanders Friday night and will be at the Bell Centre Saturday.

It's a safe bet Peter Budaj will face more than 18 Washington shots at the Verizon Center.

The Canadiens were 4-1 winners on their only visit to D.C., the third game of last season. Washington won both of its games in Montreal – including a 5-1 late-season romp in which Alex Ovechkin scored twice, added an assist and had six SoG.

Michel Therrien will go with the same skaters who easily beat Minnesota, except Douglas Murray draws in for Francis Bouillon.

Puck drops 7:10ish.

Check back later for live game blogging.

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550 Comments

Im sorry but have you read Boones comments before the game in the live blog? Can he be more negative??? Ive never seen a guy being so negative nancy!! I think he gave like 15 different stats that all are bad to support his idea that they habs would lose. Cheer up a little! its psychological to think the team will lose so that in care they do, you will say you knew it/predicted it, etc and that will make you feel all good about yourself. And in the case they win, like last night, you will just say good for them and avoid feeling bad about yourself. Look it up..this kind of behavior actually has a name in psychology that escapes me at the moment!

There is no messing around our goalie when Murray is on the ice.
This is exactly what we need.

Fine it feels like he’s carrying a trailer and he’s not so good under pressure but he does actually have a strong first pass. San Jose fans must missed the Murray from 2,3 years ago when he was playing with Dan Boyle..

My point is I’d rather see a rotation between Bouillon/Diaz… Same type of player. Unlikely to happen since Diaz is a righty but oh well.

first, Budaj’s outstanding goaltending …which understates for Me that Stephane Waite was THE most important/best acquisition for Us over the summer

second; this is the first time, for these eyes, to have seen PK Subban not running-away from a fight or turtling since He became a Hab …was VERY impressed how He stood up for Markov (remember all that crap last season people here were throwing around that Markov and PK didn’t get-along ?) …and, in My eyes, PK actually won the fight, which was a nice bonus

… and about DD’s goal. The original call on the ice was a good goal. The long distance camera showing the puck hitting the stick above the crossbar is at ice level, so it is not possible to determine if it was contacted above or below the crossbar.

The only way to properly us video on a close call like that is to have cameras at crossbar level (4 feet).

May have been the Norris-incumbent’s first penalty, major or minor in about 10 to 11 games. Would be a nice improvement on the 124 and 119 PIM totals he had in the last two 82 game seasons. Larry Robinson never had more than about 76 PIM in any one season, and he had fighting majors in those PIM totals.

This is a good win to enjoy….but it also shows that we should be happy if the Habs make the playoffs…if the Habs make the playoffs ,the first round will be a complete toss up…all the players gave a total effort..some did not look good but that is more of a talent issue…Galchenyuk is lots of talent but i just cant see him making the USA olympic team yet as he is fairly weak in his d zone and because of his age has physical limitations…

Good game. I was worried about the failure to go for the throat in the second but rock solid goaltending and an excellent transition game made the difference tonight. The face off performance was vastly improved.
Bring on the Pens.

Malkin scoring for the first time in 15 games gives perspective on how hard it is to be a consistent goal-scorer at this level, but it would be nice if Max pots some with regularity. He’s the one legit 30-goal scorer on the team. Little hope Eller could match his fellow Danes in the league (Nielsen, Boedker). Gallagher already had one stint on the IR last year. Galchenyuk’s time is in about two years. Nice opportunistic win, Habs outworked the Caps.

Good win the boys.
Not sure why there was a bit of 3rd period HIO comment meltdown.
Obviously the home team will come out strong with a last ditch effort during that frame, specially after the ass whooping they saw the other night against the Pens. Habs did a good job of taking the lead early, stifling them in the 2nd, and hanging on.

In a perfect world they’d do more than hang on, but you don’t score 4,5,6 goals every game. Great job with the discipline this game as well.
Sucks to lose Bourni, hope it’s not bad at all. Either way I think they left some in the tank for tomorrow, hence the lead protection – you can take a chance with that in a 3-0 road game. We get at least 3 out of 4 points this weekend.

Habs competed but didn’t outplay the Caps. Killed off a 5 on 3 with desperation plays and great stick work by Whitey and almost as good a play by Captain Brian. Without all these plays, a different result.